The Cleveland Orchestra’s Centennial Season came to a festive conclusion at Severance Hall on Thursday, May 17. After performing the first eight of Beethoven’s symphonies in four concerts between May 9 and 13, Franz Welser-Möst led the Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus (prepared by Lisa Wong), and soloists Erin Wall, Jennifer Johnston, Norbert Ernst, and Dashon Burton in a blazing account of “The Ninth,” the final performance in Welser-Möst’s deeply philosophical Prometheus Project. (Read David Kulma’s reviews of the earlier concerts here.) [Read more…]

The first of two festivals capping off The Cleveland Orchestra’s centennial season was based around Richard Wagner’s groundbreaking version of the Tristan and Isolde legend. Culminating on April 29 with the third performance of his four-hour-long opera (Wagner called it “eine Handlung”), the festival also included a performance of Messiaen’s transcendent Turangalîla- Symphonie, and a concert titled “Divine Ecstasy,” a gathering of works that translate the notion of love-intoxication into the spiritual realm. [Read more…]

Joseph Haydn’s two great oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, came along late in his life after the composer had visited London and was impressed by Handel’s large dramatic works for chorus and orchestra. After bravely performing a stripped-down version of The Seasons on Thursday — two of the soloists were ailing — Franz Welser-Möst led The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in an enthralling performance of the complete oratorio on Saturday evening. [Read more…]

On Friday, March 4 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra will perform what director Brett Mitchell says is the most challenging piece the orchestra has played during his tenure. “Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka is certainly a challenging undertaking even for the best of professional orchestras,” Mitchell pointed out during a telephone interview. “But I’ve been with COYO long enough to know that whatever challenge is put in front of the musicians they will, without fail, rise to the challenge. In fact, they always end up exceeding my expectations.” [Read more…]

As many conductors and orchestras have learned through experience, capturing the essence and style of French music is not easy unless you’ve been blessed with Gallic genes. On Sunday evening at Severance Hall, Brett Mitchell and the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Chorus won honorary membership in Le Panthéon with convincing performances of challenging scores by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré.

Having explored the music of John Adams, Roy Harris and Tchaikovsky in its first concert last November, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra will turn to music by French composers for its Severance Hall concert on Sunday, February 8 at 7:00 p.m. The program will include Maurice Ravel’s Une barque sur l’ocean, Claude Debussy’s La mer and Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, op. 48, featuring the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus.

Speaking with music director Brett Mitchell by telephone about the February program, I noted that he’s really throwing down a challenge with this repertory. “We always do,” he replied. “The nice thing with young people is they don’t realize that what they’re taking on is going be difficult — at least until they start practicing.”

Inspired by imagery of the Virgin and Child in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s medieval collection, Mother and Child, a progressive choral event, invites audiences to experience a stunning intersection of the aural and the visual in three different museum spaces on Saturday, December 14. Performers will include Quire Cleveland, led by Ross Duffin, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth and Children’s Choruses, directed by Lisa Wong, and the sopranos and altos of Trinity Cathedral Choir with brass and organ conducted by Todd Wilson.

At 2:00 pm in the Reid Gallery, Quire Cleveland will begin with a work from the 15th century, There is no rose, followed by Josquin des Prez’s Ave Maria, which Duffin describes as one of the composer’s iconic works. The performance continues with an extended piece in carol form from the Court of Henry VIII, Quid petis, o fili? byRichard Pygott. “It’s about Mary speaking to her child,” says Duffin. “It’s an intimate, imagined conversation and very appropriate to the Mother and Child theme.” A Spanish Christmas piece from the 16th Century, E la don don, was printed in Venice in 1556 in the Cancionero de Upsala and survives in only one copy. Duffin says it’s a lively piece that will feature solos by Quire’s male singers. [Read more…]

Re•Views

Last Sunday, August 12, an all-Brahms concert by the Master Singers Chorale and Orchestra at SS. Cosmas and Damian Church in Twinsburg honored the retirement of founding artistic director J.D. Goddard. The afternoon’s high point was the performance of the Fourth Symphony.

The days become shorter and hotter. School resumes. Vacationers unpack. We all know how this part of the summer feels: at once hazy and pell-mell, static and sped up. Northeast Ohioans can celebrate the fact that, for the fifth year running, The Cleveland Orchestra is inviting listeners into its cool urban home for the Summers@Severance series. In the second of three concerts, conductor Vasily Petrenko made good on the Orchestra’s new vow to tell “stories…without a single word,” through music born of travel and migration.

It was another enjoyable movie night at Blossom Music Center with The Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday, August 4. On offer was The Little Mermaid (1989) — a film which had kicked off the rebirth of Disney animated musicals through the ‘90s. Conducted by Sarah Hicks to sync with five gigantic screens and a packed lawn full of families, The Cleveland Orchestra brought Alan Menken’s magical music to life.

No Exit’s chamber concert on Saturday, July 28 at Heights Arts performed by clarinetist Gunnar Owen Hirthe and flutist Hong-Da Chin, engagingly juxtaposed traditional Chinese music with contemporary Western repertoire. The program also highlighted the wonders of micro-tonality. Surrounded by the Gallery’s complex, yet minimalist exhibit, Sticks and Stones, the evening was a walk through a cultural garden of sonic delights. [Read on…]

A glorious evening of music titled “Audra McDonald Sings Broadway” featured that justly famous soprano performing with The Cleveland Orchestra and conductor Andy Einhorn. The July 29 program at Blossom Music Center included a variety of songs from musicals famous and rare, from the works of Rodgers & Hammerstein to living composers.

On Sunday, August 5 at Blossom Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra played a concise and musically satisfying program of works by three Czech composers: Smetana, Janáček, and Dvořák. British conductor Michael Francis led the stylish performance. With the temperature hovering around a sweltering and humid 87 degrees at concert time, the male members of the orchestra sensibly doffed their usual white dinner jackets for shirtsleeves. Even the tree-surrounded — and usually cooler — Blossom grounds failed to provide much relief from the midsummer heat.

Having recently turned 91, Herbert Blomstedt is practically an institution in himself, with a career spanning more than six decades. On Saturday, July 28, he returned to Northeast Ohio to lead The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center in two canonical symphonies by Mozart and Brahms. The “Jupiter” was so smooth and straightforward as to pass by unremarkably, while the stirringly passionate performance of Brahms 4 showed how a seasoned conductor with a top-flight orchestra can achieve magic.